American Love arrives some three years after Days Of Gold, not an exceptionally protracted delay but long enough to suggest there was some behind-the-scenes tinkering afoot, a suspicion supported by the fleet rise and fall of “Real Life”. That single isn’t on American Love but it’s not missed, not with Jake Owen returning to the…

If you’ve never heard of Emma Moore, two things: a) Where have you been and b) she’s a singer and songwriter from Blackpool who grew up listening to Shania Twain, Lorrie Morgan and the Dixie Chicks and boy can you tell! Emma’s first single ‘Girls Should Do’ was released in October 2015, gaining international radio…

Like Mick Jagger before him, Steven Tyler itched to launch a solo career, but where Mick struck while the iron was relatively hot, 20 years after “Satisfaction,” true, yet the Rolling Stones still packed arenas, the Aerosmith singer took the better part of a decade to figure out what he wanted to do on his…

I must confess, this album is one of those that I was most looking forward to in 2016. David Nail’s three albums to date have been utterly faultless; last album I’m A Fire was a tough act to follow and, in all honesty, I began listening to the new album Fighter with no expectations of…

LOCASH, the duo made up of Preston Brust and Chris Lucas, have been clawing their way onto country radio for years, first seeing success as songwriters with hits like Keith Urban’s No. 1 “You Gonna Fly” and Tim McGraw’s Top 10 “Truck Yeah.” Now, LOCASH are celebrating their own victory with their newly certified Gold…

On the cover of his 2014 debut album, Write You A Song, Jon Pardi seemed a bit like a metrosexual country boy but on California Sunrise, he’s decked out like an old-school cowboy, complete with a big hat and blue jeans. This is the major change in image, but the music on California Sunrise isn’t…

The first time Jennifer Nettles stepped away from Sugarland she teamed with producer Rick Rubin for That Girl, an album that leaned hard on her earthy rock underpinnings. Playing With Fire, her new set delivered two years later, is the flip side of the coin. Produced by Dann Huff – a Nashville veteran with a…

As something of an outsider to Nashville, Keith Urban has the latitude to experiment, an opportunity he seizes with new album Ripcord. The album’s very title suggests he’s diving into the great wide open and he makes no attempt to disguise the record’s heavy hip-hop and electronic influence. “Sun Don’t Let Me Down,” a collaboration…

Reckless isn’t exactly an accurate title for Martina McBride’s first album for Nash Icon, the classy home for old Nashville pros constructed by Big Machine’s Scott Borchetta. As her first full-fledged country album since Eleven, Reckless proceeds carefully, conscious of the constraints of commercial country radio and her role as a veteran. All through the…

Tennessee-born Kane Brown is a country singer who first found fame by taking his music directly to the people. In 2014, he began posting homemade videos of himself performing some of this favorite songs, and he soon became a viral sensation. In the autumn of 2015, his performance of George Strait’s “Check Yes or No”…